Reinventing Yourself In Pursue Of Your Dreams With Liz Buhay

Life truly begins when we have the courage to reinvent ourselves and chase our dreams relentlessly, regardless of our age or the boundaries we face. Join us on this episode as we hear the journey of Liz Buhay, who courageously reinvented herself time and again, chasing her dreams across borders and boundaries. She shares the lessons she's learned, the transformation she's undergone, and the dreams she continues to chase. From immigrating to the United States as a child, building a successful career, and ultimately making a monumental move to Norway, Liz has done a lot in the pursuit of a life aligned with her dreams. She emphasizes how everyone, regardless of age, can pursue their dreams relentlessly. Tune in now and dare to reinvent yourself!

If you're ready to fulfill your potential and connect to your highest purpose with clarity, confidence, and courage, my 1:1 coaching program may be for you. You can schedule a free clarity call here: https://calendly.com/yanetbcoaching/clarity-call

Please see coaching client testimonials here: https://www.ybcoaching.com/testimonials

---

Listen to the podcast here

Reinventing Yourself In Pursue Of Your Dreams With Liz Buhay

In this episode, I have a special guest. I'll be interviewing my friend and an amazing coaching client. We coached together several years ago. We were reflecting on that. She is Liz Buhay. She has such a story of resilience and reinvention, one that I told her we need to share because there are many things in Liz's life that are about recreating a new identity and version of herself.

She caught ties with Corporate America and decided to move to Norway. It’s such a big transition. In Norway, she's pursuing a career and a reinvention in renewable energy. She also created her company, Reclaim Oslo, where she creates everyday items reimagined into ceramics. Her work in this company is all about ceramics and clay. She creates such beautiful products. She's someone that I highly admire. She's an inspiration. Liz, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

I'm doing well. Thank you for that. It's a well-deserved introduction, but thank you so much for that introduction.

The readers might be asking, “How do you guys know each other?”

We met at ExxonMobil in 2017.

I transitioned from engineering to supply chain at ExxonMobil in 2015. We met a few years later.

You were one of my first friends at ExxonMobil. You're one of those people that is inclusive. You come in and embrace everyone. That's how I felt with you. I felt like this immediate connection with you with everything. We talked about life, Panchakarma, and all the other things that we were into. We connected on that level, best friends for sure.

I was reflecting on why we connected and why we stayed friends after years. We both have a passion for improving and transforming ourselves and finding ways to understand who we are and fulfill our potential, whatever that might look like. We have had some crazy adventures in our years of friendship. Thank you so much for being an amazing soul on this path. I appreciate you so much.

I’m happy to be here.

We want to know all about Liz. Where were you born? What's your background? Let's start there.

I was born in the Philippines in 1978. When I was five years old, my family and I immigrated from the Philippines to the US. It was during the Marcos Revolution. My dad was not happy with how things were going in the Philippines. Ferdinand Marcos was the President at the time. He instilled martial law in the whole country. He took his Commander in Chief position and took over all of the government, the military, and the economy.

My dad's family business was a sugar plantation at the time. We had a sugar plant farm. The president wanted a piece of it. He was like that with every business in the Philippines. If he didn't like a certain senator or congressman, he would have them assassinated. It was that situation in the Philippines that my dad was like, “Why are we here? We're never going to be able to advance in anything we do. We worked so hard and we get nothing.”

It was my older brother at the time, who's three years older, Christian, and my little sister Carol. She was three, and my brother was eight. My mom was pregnant with my little brother, Angelo. She was five months pregnant. They moved to the US with only $800 in their pocket and started a new life. It wasn't even a legal move because my dad was trying to figure out, “How are we going to get the family there with my mom?” He got a business visa. He was thinking, “I'll go look at some agricultural places and see if I could start a business in the US.” He went to some business meetings and decided, “I've got this business visa. Let me go over the entire family.” Even though he didn't have business at all, that's what he did.

Thankfully, part of my mom's family was there. My grandmother and uncle helped to buy this candy store in the Houston Medical Center. He is right across from Methodist Hospital. I don't know if you're familiar with that area. It’s a parking lot now, but my dad had a candy store. That's what we used for the business visa as that's what the business he was starting. How we were able to stay in the US is through that candy store and him working through there.

It was an interesting time in our lives because we didn't have much. It was hard, especially when there were many kids. How do you feed them all? It was crazy because every time my mom told this story, her eyes started welling up because we lived in a small apartment. It was this place on Fondren, the Southwest side of Houston. It's not a nice neighborhood. We were all in this one apartment, and it was all of us. The security wasn't great there. One time, our apartment was broken into. Many things were stolen. We didn't think my mom and dad had enough money for Christmas presents. We weren't expecting anything. Christmas came around, and we had jackets and all these other things we needed. We were like, “Santa Claus does exist.”

I swear that it's the funniest thing ever, but my mom didn't tell us that there wasn't a Santa Claus. I believed there was a Santa Claus until I was in middle school or high school because I knew there was no way that my parents could afford certain things. You get these things during Christmas, and you're like, “How is that even possible? That can't be possible. There has to be a Santa Claus because there's no other way to explain it.” We were innocent. We didn't know any better because we thought, “This is how it works.” What we're being given is through something else, whether it be God or Santa Claus, all of these things that God has given to us, and we didn't know how it happened.

As an adult, looking back at that story of immigrating, doing the unrealistic thing, and the thing your parents didn't even know how it was going to happen, but they had a bigger why to figure out the way there, which was all of you to have the resources and opportunities they couldn't have. Looking back at your childhood and your journey of immigrating to the US, how do you think that has affected you in terms of your beliefs and your thoughts in this journey of reinvention that you are having from moving to the US to Norway and starting your business? When I look at your story, you have broken through every barrier and boundary of what's possible. How did that impact you looking back at your adulthood?

Because we didn't have a lot of money, it was hammered into us that we had to do well in school. We had to get scholarships to go to university because there was no way we were going to go to university, especially when we didn't have a green card. I don't even think I even thought of what I wanted to do in life. It was almost like you're going to go into business because you said that you didn't want to be a doctor because blood made me feel dizzy, and I couldn't stand it. I went to a medical high school. That's how serious my parents were. My older brother, me, and my little sister all went to a medical high school. We're all expected to be lawyers, doctors, and engineers. I was like, “I can't do it. I must find something else.”

I decided to do International Studies in Business because I had no idea what else to do. I had to make sure I worked hard and did the best I could because I never felt like I was smart enough, but I knew I could work hard. I feel like that always made up for what I lacked intellectually because I was never good in Math, but I was good at English class and Literature. I was like, “Miel, if you work hard enough, you'll get where you need to go.”

I've proven myself through the years that that is exactly my whole modus operandi. I have to do that to be able to get anywhere in life. If that means working your ass off harder than anyone else, that's what you have to do. That's what I've had to do to survive in this whole immigration process to Norway. I don't see myself the way you do. I feel like I'm still struggling and trying to figure out that whole process.

It's a learning experience day-to-day because I don't know how my parents did, especially when they had kids, and I don't have any and have that responsibility. “How am I going to feed these children? How am I going to support these kids?” I don't have that burden. At the same time, moving to a new country later in life where you were at the top of your game at work, and you're on ground zero now that you've moved to a new country, that's been a humbling experience.

Tell us more about that. I met you at ExxonMobil in supply chain and procurement. You were working on capital projects in that world. You were amazing at that. You were a high performer. You decided to move to another country and start over in some aspect. Tell us about that journey of you. Your love journey has to be integrated here because Liz is resilient. She has a goal. She's the most resilient person and patient. She's going to get it. She doesn't see herself like that. When I zoom out on her story, it is incredible to me.

Now that you've said it that way, what people may not know about me is that I met my husband in 2011. We were set up on a blind date that my aunt set up. We were together for a few years, and we broke up. He moved to Kazakhstan for several years. Even though we were broken up the entire time, I would still see him three times a year and still go to Norway.

He's Norwegian.

It was that situation. I was doing Panchakarma at the time, and I was frustrated. I was like, “This man won't commit. I see him all the time. I'm in front of him, and there's nothing.” I have no idea what he feels about me because he doesn't tell me. My Panchakarma doctor said, “It seems like he doesn't tell you things, but he does tell you things in the way that he does things. He's action-based. He shows up.”

What is Panchakarma for those who are reading and they're like, “What is that?”

Panchakarma is part of Ayurveda. Ayurveda is a 5,000-year-old way of how Indians have done anything regarding healthcare. They do everything regarding what you eat or routines that you have to keep your body moving in the right direction and balance your dose. After having all these different health concerns, I could never get anything to work for me until I tried Ayurveda and Panchakarma in a detoxing system because everything's held in your gut. That's your body's mind. Everything is in there. Once you have that under control, everything starts working better overall.

I've been doing Panchakarmas every year since 2017. It was 2018, and I was telling my doctor, “What am I supposed to do? This man is stressing me out. He won't tell me. I'm going to be 40.” She's like, “You need to be honest with your feelings.” It was November 2018. My husband, Triva, said yes to coming with me to Istanbul, Turkey. We went to Istanbul and went to Cappadocia. Everything was great, as it usually is. We were having fun. On the night of my 40th birthday, I had a come to Jesus moment with him. I'm like, “Is this happening or not? It is because I can't put my life on hold for you for the rest of my life. We're moving forward, or I have to let this go because it's not healthy for me.”

For several years, you guys had been on and off. In 2011, you met him.

It wasn't even on and off. We weren't even together.

It’s like friends with benefits.

That's all great and everything, but I'm going to be 40 years old. I need to focus on somebody who's going to be able to reciprocate whatever I'm giving them and vice versa. I was like, “I can't do this anymore.” He was upset. I was upset because I ruined my birthday dinner night. The next day, I left and went back to Houston. He went back to Kazakhstan, and I was like, “What the hell did I do?” Fast forward, it was fine. He was moving home. Once he started to know that he was going to settle down, that's when we decided to go forward with it. All in all, we got married in June 2021. That was ten years after we met. Everyone was like, “It's about time.”

I thought the same. First of all, I admire Liz because she knew what she wanted. She waited for it. That's amazing. Hats off to you. How did your soul know that he was the one? How did you know during all those years that somehow he was the one for you?

Even though it felt like I was chipping on ice whenever we wanted to talk about it or I wanted to talk about anything serious, regardless of that, every time we were together, it was like we were friends hanging out. It was comfortable. I would talk to him all the time on the weekends. I would call him and talk to him about anything, like what I was thinking about, other business opportunities, or brainstorming. He was my best friend. That's how I saw him, first and foremost. We got along well. The whole foundation of our relationship is that friendship. Everything else became easy. It took a while, and it was frustrating as hell. The times that we were together were easy.

He was the one for you because it happened. In 2021, you get married. I was there in the Zoom call because they got married in Norway. This is my ideal wedding because it was simple. Mine was simple. I'm low-stress and simple. Let's go to the point. I love that. You look beautiful. When did you decide you were going to move to Norway? What feelings did you feel? Were you scared? Tell me because you are an adventurous person. You love traveling.

Were you scared because you had to tell your amazing job that you were a high performer, like, “I'm leaving because I'm pursuing my dream of moving to Norway with the love of my life.” What was your thought process and feelings about going through it? We had a coffee once. You were like, “Yanet, I'm burned out.” It was close to you leaving. I'm like, “Liz, you have to do something about it. Let's go.” What was the process of reinvention and going for it finally?

For a lot of years, even when I was working at my previous job, I was with an EPC company for several years. I always felt like I was doing things a grade 28 would do. I was like a grade 24 or 25. I always felt like people took advantage of young people. They work hard. I thought, “It's going to be different at this company because it's an operating company. It'll be a lot easier.” I moved to an operating company. It felt like it was the same thing. Every time I left a position, it would be replaced by three people. I'm like, “How do I even carry that work? I bust my ass.”

In the back of my mind, I was like, “You always have to constantly prove yourself because you're not the smartest, but you work hard.” That's what I had in the back of my mind the entire time. That's what I kept on doing. After a while, COVID happened, and I was trying to get to Paris because my project at the time was for a Russian project. Our EPC company was in Paris. That's a perfect situation where I'm a little bit closer to Europe, but I'm not in Norway. I'll be easing into the process a little bit more, but COVID happened, and that all went away.

With COVID and working 60 to 70 hours a week, it was an insane amount of hours because you are at home now, which means you can get onto calls with Paris, Russia, and everywhere else because you get to be at home and stay up for an 11:00 meeting, go to sleep at 1:00 and get up again for a 6:00 or 8:00 meeting. I was burned out. I was going to Norway at that time because it was odd that I wasn't seeing Triva. Once we finally decided to be together, we couldn't be together because of COVID. I was like, “What is this life all about?”

It’s not all about money. You can make the money back, but this is the time of our life when we need to start focusing on ourselves and starting a family. I'm no spring chicken. I was 42 or 43 almost at that time. I said, “I need to move on and quit because Exxon couldn't find anything for me in Norway. I'm losing the money, but it's fine. I'll find another job with my experience. It should be fine.”

This is the time of our life that we need to start focusing on ourselves.

That's what I did. I turned in my resignation in October 2021. It took two months to try to move my entire life. I landed here in Norway on December 1st, 2021. I thought, “I'll take a year off because of COVID.” That whole situation was stressful. I'll have a year of fun, and I'll begin to start looking for a job. That's when I did coaching with you. I went to Bali for 30 days for a Panchakarma retreat. I thought that finding a job here would be easy, and it wasn't. I was shocked. It took me a year to find a relevant position. I started my first job here in Norway on August 21st, 2023.

There is so much to unpack there. When you were about to quit, were you feeling scared? What were the thoughts that were running through your mind, or you were like, “Yes, it's time?”

No, I wasn't scared. I was freaking confident. I was like, “This is the right decision for me. I love to travel. This is going to be fun. It's going to be good. I always wanted to live in Europe. This is going to be perfect.” I wasn't worried about the pension or the salary I was losing because I thought it'd be fine because I'd be able to get the same thing more or less in Norway. Plus, it is a more laid-back work environment. I wasn't scared at all. I was excited. I was like, “I can't wait to leave the US.” You know how the US was at that time. With all of the Trump stuff going on and all the protests, it's ongoing. It was heavy. I was ready to move.

I love this pattern that you mentioned that many women run, and I have run this pattern in the past of overcommitting, overdoing, and overpleasing, like getting busy to help everyone. Everyone was relying on us. We need to make sure we fit in. Let's overdo and overperform. I see that pattern. I was going to say it because of immigrants, but I've seen the pattern in White females that they didn't immigrate. It's a female and a woman thing of feeling that we are not worthy enough subconsciously and, therefore, with the actions and everything we are doing for others, overcompensating. What are your thoughts on that?

I see that and a lot of my friends. It's the way we've all been programmed when we were growing up that this is the way that you have to be and to be able to be even as good as a man. I'm not surprised that women do that, especially in my situation, being an immigrant, the burden is even more. You know that you have no choice. You have to do well, or else you can't provide for your family. You can't do this or that, you know? There's an overall pressure there that I and my sister felt.

It is interesting because, in our minds, we feel that way. In supply chain, there was a position where I worked a lot, but there were others that I was like, “No, I'm not going to work more than this.” I was able to be more productive. Many times, it's also an internal pressure that we put on ourselves instead of setting those boundaries and communicating. How do you think you have broken that pattern as you have continued to evolve and grow?

Norwegian culture helps as well because things here are laid back way more than I ever thought it was going to be. When I'm at work, I don't care as much anymore because the people around me don't care. I don't feel this need to compete anymore because you don't have that performance competitiveness that is a part of American culture.

In the company we worked on, there was a ranking system. It was intense. I have many stories about that I cannot wait to tell. It was an intense culture in that sense. You felt you were at a disadvantage already in many ways. You had to overdo everything.

Even the other companies I've worked for, that's always how it was. In the US, you have to perform and work overtime, even though it's not compensated to get up to that next level. I feel like here, people don't expect that of you. They care more about your well-being, family life, and private life away from work than actual work, which is interesting. It promotes this complacency in a culture where no one tries to be more than they could be.

That's why, in the US, in my vision of the ideal world, people wake up individually. They start defining the vision of what they want instead of letting the environment define who they are, their potential, what they need to do, and who they need to be. That is what is happening a lot. We are letting the environment define us.

The environment plays a role, but if the individual wakes up and awakens, it can influence the environment. If the environment is not aligning anymore, let's go to another place or create my own vision or create my own thing. We cannot wait until the culture or the corporate changes for us to be who we want to be. That's why you left.

Transitioning here was different. Even though my work is laid back, I also only make half of what I made in the US. It's a huge sacrifice to know that I won't be able to make that same money ever again. As long as I live here, it's not going to happen. You have to be a lot more mindful about what you need versus this culture in the US, where it's more is more. More is a success. Whereas here it's like, success means spending time with your family or being able to go on flexible time to go on walks and other things you can do outside of work. It's this different measure of life here, and it's a nice break from the US life. Do I miss the money? I do. I miss it. At the same time, I feel like I'm also giving it up for something that's better.

Are you happier overall?

I'm still working on it, to be quite honest. I'm working on trying to be happy with what I've got every single day because, like I said, even though the work environment in Norway is chill, it's mediocre. People don't want to do well at work. They are half-assed everything, which bothers me coming from what I came from before. I'm like, “You guys can do so much better. Why don't you help yourself to be better?”

That bothers me a lot. I try not to stress out about it. That's why I had to go and focus on my pottery on Friday after work because I was like, “This is insane how much people don't care. They do things half-assed here.” Hopefully, I'll be able to let that go or at least try to change things within the company to make them better. That's what I'm also trying. We'll see how that goes.

Everyone working for a company, at the end of the day, you got to be loyal to yourself. You have to find that happiness. I love that you have your business of ceramics because you can put that creativity and drive into something that is yours. The culture sometimes is like that. I had to remind myself. I'm not here to save the world. I'm here to serve the world. Sometimes, mainly females, we put this pressure on expectation on us to save the company, culture, and everyone around us. The only person you have to save is yourself. I love that you're on this journey.

That's the great thing about Norway. It's given me the time and mental capacity to pursue things other than work. I would've never had the time or the energy to do something like this when I was working for my other corporate jobs. To have this at the same time, zen out and do something else creative that's fulfilling for me. You can't put a price on that.

The great thing about Norway is it gives you the time and mental capacity to be able to pursue things other than just work.

You are someone who I consider creative. How did you tap into the creativity to create your own company? How do you give yourself permission to dream to go after something that whenever you create that thing, you don't have evidence that it's possible? I remember when we were coaching together, you were like, “I don't know how I'm going to sell the first piece. I cannot even visualize that because it has never happened in my life.” It has happened several times, but back then, how did you let yourself go through that process?

Even though I did start the business early on, as soon as I almost knew that I loved doing this, I started the business with your help and prompting to go in that direction for me. At the same time, I did it out of fun and love of the craft. Having that business and trying to figure out, I hope this sells, that was secondary for me because I wanted to be creative.

I'm having custom orders done or people saying, “I love that piece. Can you make more of it?” That makes me feel like now I have to make more of this. My creative juices are squelched a little bit because now I've made something that people like. I can't experiment anymore. The good thing about having people love your work and also the bad thing was like, “What if I make this and they don't like it? I have to make that old thing again that I'm over now because I've moved on to something else.”

That's what I've had to go through with this company. I try to figure out what is selling and what people like, and I hope it all works out. Once you make a piece, you don't even know if it'll survive the kiln. I had something that I'd made for weeks. It goes through two different burnings to be a final product. It is slumped on both sides. It was supposed to be this nice platter pedestal platter thing. What's what you have to let go of with clay is you never know what's going to happen to it. You have all these great expectations of how a piece is going to work out, but it could go completely awry at the end, and you're like, “How am I going to learn from this situation? What could I do differently the next time?”

That's what it's taught me about life. You've got to try a number of different things, see how it goes, and look at it in the long term. I'm like, “Do you think it'll work out?” At least you tried, and you figured out how to tweak it later on to see. You’re like, “Could it work maybe in a different way if I did this differently or if I had a different perception of something?” Doing pottery has also allowed me to have different perspectives and expectations of things.

Pottery is your biggest spiritual teacher because of that beautiful process of putting all your effort into certain pieces and realizing that you're following the process, but sometimes the outcome may not be what you worked on. Something in business that I work on continuously, and I notice my clients struggling with the same thing, is letting go of the attachment to the outcome. What a powerful lesson, Liz.

Things turned out a lot better than you expected. The thing is, you have to pour in the effort and the love into whatever it is you're doing, and you'll see the payoff.

Here's the thing. I don't know if you remember this from coaching, but there is no failure, only feedback. I'm sure that whenever that outcome doesn't occur, maybe you learn something from what you need to do the next time to make sure that it comes out better. Life is an experimentation journey. Sometimes, we want to have certainty about every single thing we are working on. We want the outcome to be perfect, but perfect compared to what I think. We are small-minded. Thank God and the universe that we don't know how things will play out because, many times, they could play out way better. Because we are attached to things going one certain way, we stay small.

Would I have ever thought that I'd be here? Yes, I hope so. Did it turn out the way that I expected it to be? Not, but I'm working on it every single day. I'm choosing to be happy and to take in every single moment because, at one point, you're wishing you had all these things. Now, here I am with everything that I ever wished for. You have to find a way to be happy in your moment because you're not going to be completely 100% happy.

You have to find a way to be happy in your moment because you're not going to be completely 100% happy.

You have to take the moments that are happy to you and make sure you do more of that, whatever that is. That's the lessons I've learned since moving here because I had many expectations for how it was going to be. I’m trying to do my best every single day and get happy about the peak of sun that I see because Norway is dark nowadays. It’s those little things that I'm grasping onto, and it's good.

That's a lesson of life because we rarely live in the present. We are here. We got our dream and goal. We are happy for two days, and on the third day, we still don't have this. We are always going to be looking toward the next thing. It doesn't matter where we are. Happiness is found within ourselves in the small moments in the present. Living a life that feels authentic to us is one of the most challenging things to do because it's like going against the current and creating a path that hasn't been created before, which is what you're doing. It's not going to feel easy many times.

It's been challenging. It's almost like you're trying to fit a circle into a square peg all the time. Do I turn this way or that way to fit in? That can be draining at times. All you want to do is speak English and not have to speak Norwegian or think in Norwegia but to have a feeling that you fit in. A big challenge for me is trying to fit into a culture that isn't the warmest in the world.

There are many changes in the language, culture, and work environment. You are in the ground, which in Europe sometimes can be a little bit more strict in certain ways. There are many things. Your identity is changing with all of that transition. If someone has a dream and they're like, “I want to start my own company. I want to move to another country. I want to quit my job. I want to go after the love of my life.” There are many things you have done, Liz, that are inspiring.

I have a teacher who says, “Whatever you think you are at any given moment, you are way more than that. Many times, how we see ourselves is not an accurate representation of who we are. Sometimes, others see us in a brighter light.” To me, you are amazing. You have made it in many ways. If someone has a dream, what would be the piece of advice you give to that person, given that you have reinvented yourself many times to follow that path that feels authentic to you?

Whatever that dream may be, you should pour yourself into it 100%. Make the time to do it. I know it's hard with the way American work culture is, but if you want something bad enough, you'll pour the time and effort into it. It'll pay off at the end if you constantly work on it. If you have the passion for it, it'll all play out. My husband started a company because he couldn't get a job in Norway. To see how passionate he is about decision science, which is the most boring thing in the world. He loves it so much.

He feels like he is doing a service to society to help to make better decisions. He doesn't understand why companies don't try to do something differently. If you think something has worked all this time, why wouldn't you want to go that bit further and try to figure that out? What could make it better? Like your company, you're trying to build it up, and sometimes it doesn't go the way you want, or you're not making as much money as fast as you want. If you have passion for it, you can do whatever you want, and it'll pay off. Just hustle.

It is like our parents immigrating to the United States. They had a million reasons and limitations of why they couldn't do it, but their hunger to make that vision possible was way bigger. They didn't have the resources, the language, or know anything, but they committed to the process. That is powerful. We coach together. I wanted to ask you about this. What drove you to want to explore coaching? Which was the first time ever you had done it? What would you say was the biggest transformation of you before and after coaching? Whatever comes to mind. There is no right or wrong answer here.

I felt like I finally had time to try to figure out what I wanted in life. I've never had that break from work where I was able to focus on myself and what I wanted out of life. It helped me focus on what it was that I wanted. You helped me focus on all these great things about myself that I didn't know that I could do until you made me write it down, and I was like, “I did that and this.”

The guided sessions with you helped me to try to focus on who I am, what I want to do, what I want out of life, and the steps to get there. I still carry that with me. I still write things down. I'm like, “This is what I need to do to get here. What's the plan?” I've been focused like that at work because I'm paid to do it. You never focus on that about yourself.

The most important thing is you. Why don't you put that much effort into yourself than you do for a company that pays you? It doesn't make a lot of sense. You're never investing in yourself. You're investing in somebody or something you're not getting anything from. That's what I took away from our sessions. It is to start focusing on me, what I want, and how to get there and have that overplan because sometimes I feel like you're swimming in the ocean. You're like, “I'm eventually going to get there, but where do you want to go?” That was never clear to me.

It doesn't make sense to me clearly because everyone is willing to do everything and anything for their careers but not for themselves. There is a lot of relying on the leadership and your boss to figure out your life. They don't even have to figure out their life. What am I going to do about your life and your career to be completely raw here?

The career, the job, or the business should be a data point to get to a bigger vision. It shouldn't be your whole life by any means. It should fit into your long-term direction for every individual. I love that you said that because that is powerful. That's the most foundational and important thing we don't get taught in school or anywhere else. Even in school, we are taught what path to follow and what to think. We are never taught how to think and how to know ourselves. You have a mind, body, and soul. Let's dig deeper. We are never taught ourselves. We are taught about 100 dead people who made amazing contributions. What about us that we are here alive, trying to figure out what contribution we want to make in this lifetime?

It’s all of us. We're also trying to figure things out even at 40 because we were never given the tools to do any of that stuff in school. You're trying to figure things out as you go and hoping you'll be happy and something will stick along the way. I wish we did what you are teaching us now in schools to younger kids to help them through the process. When it comes time for high school and college, know what you want to do in life.

This is not the episode to talk about this, but there is also a fear of not having control of people. Most people are taught earlier on to work for someone else. Imagine everyone doing whatever the heck they want to do. They are relying on their fulfillment instead of external validation. A lot of people are afraid of people awakening and doing the best for their hearts and souls because that's the best way they're going to contribute to the world and society in a way.

Can you imagine what that would be and what world we would live in if that were the case?

That would be cool. I want to ask you a question. I get excited because your story is such an inspiration to everyone out there. Before introducing Liz, I asked her, “What is a key takeaway that you want all the readers to get?” She's like, “We are all resilient.” That was such a powerful answer on your end. I also dream of a world where we are dreaming often, not nightmare dreaming. We nightmare dream all the time. It was the worst thing that could happen. I dream of a world where this question is being asked on a daily basis. What are you dreaming of? What are you daydreaming of? What is a big project for Liz or this big thing that you are like, “I would love to create this?”

In our household, at the moment, we are starting a family.

That's a big creation.

Doing it at 45 years old, I was telling my husband, “Am I crazy? Are we crazy? We're tired now. How can we imagine bringing a child into this world and having the time to do that?” This is the best country to do it in. They support parents and children so much here, which I am grateful for. At the end of the day, I will be able to have a year of maternity leave and amazing help with daycare and expenses for the child. I won't have to pay for college. That's insanity. Having a family, dreaming about that, and having that little nuclear group where you can do everything together and build memories are the exciting things we're working on at the moment.

Looking back at your record of breaking the boundary of anything, everything, any possibility, my friend, this is happening for you., I can visualize it for you.

Thank you. I'm scared and excited.

I want to, from my soul and heart, thank you so much for vulnerably sharing your story of reinvention. Many people are going to be inspired by this capacity to dream, start over, change, and reinvent yourself. If people are like, “Liz, I want to connect with you because I think you're amazing,” where can they find you on Instagram or LinkedIn?

My Instagram is @Miel_Oslo. @Miel_N_Ollie is my Instagram for my personal if anybody has any questions about Norway, trying to get pregnant at 45, or pottery.

We're going to do another episode.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate. This has been so much fun.

I'm happy. Thank you everyone for reading. Please connect with Liz. If you enjoy this episode, share it with your friends and family, and I'll see you next episode.

Important Links

• Liz Buhay
• Miel_Oslo – Instagram
• @Miel_N_Ollie – Instagram
• https://Calendly.com/yanetbcoaching/clarity-call
• https://www.YBCoaching.com/testimonials